From This Day Forward
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Summary: The wedding of Jean Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher. Romantic fluff.


(**Author's Note:** A bit of unabashed mush, depicting the wedding of Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher. If you don't care for the premise, then you won't get much out of the story! AU, of course, though IMO that's a bit of too bad, isn't it? First appeared in the fanzine _King of Infinite Space_ #5.)

_**  
From This Day Forward  
**_by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring

Twenty-six years ago, Jean-Luc Picard had stood, stiff and self-conscious, at the front of an ancient church, and waited as a lovely young woman in candlelight satin walked up the aisle to join her hand and her future with those of the man she loved. The groom then had been Jack Wesley Crusher, a Starfleet lieutenant and Picard's officer and dearest friend. Picard had suppressed a pang of envy as the couple pronounced their vows and Beverly Howard walked back down that same aisle as Beverly Crusher. 

Now Picard stood, as stiff and more self-conscious, at the head of an aisle formed in the lounge of a state-of-the-art starship, and waited again for the woman who'd been born Beverly Howard. Though the years between that first time and this had marked that woman as surely as they'd marked Picard himself, though today bright silk would displace the soft pastels of that other time, Picard knew this: time and changes had only made that woman lovelier.

It dazzled him, amazed him, to realize that this wedding hall she would leave as Beverly Picard. His wife.

In an odd sort of way, Picard supposed that he and Beverly partly owed this day, this celebration, this marriage, to two who would not have been their willing benefactors: the KesPrit, and Q. For many years Picard, ridden by guilt and pain over his role in Beverly's first husband's death, had repressed his feelings for the beautiful doctor; repressed them so well that he'd nearly been able to deny their existence in favor of the safe, comfortable fiction that he and Beverly were "just friends." Then their kidnappers on KesPrit had implanted Picard and Crusher with devices that linked their minds. From Beverly's mind, he had learned the warm affection she cherished for him; from his, she had read his deeply-buried love. They might have become lovers right then, had she not also been sensitive to his pain, realized that he needed to find his own way through it before he could truly accept his feeling for her.

It had taken Q to bring them, bring Picard, through that final barrier, by forcing the captain to time-shift through three different realities -- including one in which, 25 years hence, Picard had married and divorced Beverly Crusher. Experiencing the thoughts and memories of his future counterpart, Picard realized that, though aching for the misunderstanding that had ended his marriage to Beverly, the other had never regretted that the marriage had taken place. Picard had shared the affection the older man still felt for the woman who was no longer his wife; knew that despite their later estrangement, many of that man's sweetest memories were of Beverly and the life they had shared.

Picard had realized, after that, that whatever ultimately became of his and Beverly's relationship, he had to taste the joy his counterpart had felt, to know what it was to love and be loved by Beverly Howard Crusher. And he'd set himself to the task of putting his own emotional "house" in order, as it were, so that he could invite her in.

Their relationship had progressed steadily and certainly after that, even the loss of the _Enterprise_-D proving insufficient to separate them. Now, only two years after Picard's encounter with the Jean-Luc who had been Beverly's husband, he stood ready, and more than ready, to marry the woman himself. Just at the moment, it seemed that the wait was nearly interminable....Picard shifted in his place.

"You in a hurry, sir?" a quiet voice from behind him asked, a little too innocently.

Had his brother Robert lived to see this day, Picard would undoubtedly have asked the older man to stand beside him for his marriage. A wedding was, after all, a time for family, and the fact that Robert had not extended a similar invitation for his own wedding would not have hindered Jean-Luc. In the years between Robert's marriage and his death, the two brothers' relationship had changed markedly; the older had gone from being the younger's bitter antagonist to his uneasy defender. Jean-Luc would have been delighted to honor that change in this fashion, happy to address his brother as "best man." For all the joy he took in this occasion, the captain regretted that he would not have that opportunity.

Instead, he'd chosen a "brother" of another sort to stand with him this day; a brother-at-arms, a shipmate and friend. And Will Riker had accepted the invitation with alacrity, as if he, like Picard, had felt that it was right, fitting, and proper that he should be at the captain's back in the older man's moment of happiness just as he had been in the many moments of pain and fear and doubt they had shared on the _Enterprise_.

Picard looked back over his shoulder. Will Riker's blue eyes twinkled back at him, unashamed and unapologetic, and the neat dark beard was split by a grin so open and irresistible that Picard could not resist responding in kind. "Perhaps a bit impatient," the captain conceded softly. "Can you blame me?"

"Not at all, sir," Riker murmured, genial. "Saw the doctor in her gown yesterday." His whistle was almost inaudible but decidedly appreciative.

As the color went to Jean-Luc's cheeks, he heard a snort of amusement from behind the podium and his eyes went straight to its source, the man who stood in what had often been Jean-Luc's own place at shipboard weddings. Gregory Quinn, resplendent in the full-dress garb of an admiral, smirked back unrepentantly. Since the only officer (other than a chaplain, which Picard and Beverly, neither of them traditionally religious, had decided against) who could perform marriages on a starship was its commander -- and since for obvious reasons the usual officiant wouldn't be available -- Picard's old comrade, long retired from field duty, had simply and blatantly commandeered this ship for the length of the ceremony. Picard had been mildly shocked at such an obvious manipulation of power, but Quinn had teased, "Ease up, Jean-Luc! If being an admiral doesn't mean you get dibs on marrying your favorite couple in all of Starfleet, then what's all this fancy braid good for? I'll give the ship back when I'm done, I promise!"

"Why do all human ceremonies take forever to begin?" a basso profunda rumbled from behind Riker. Picard smiled again at Worf's audible impatience.

Though Picard had decided early on that he wanted one of his officers from the _Enterprise_-D (where he and his lady had, after all, first spoken of love) to serve as groomsman and usher, for some time he'd been uncertain who to ask: Data, whom Picard knew appreciated the insight such duties gave him into the human situation, or Worf, who had asked the captain to stand beside him as _cha'Dich_ on quite a different occasion. Beverly had settled the question by inviting Data to be her escort, giving Picard the chance to return the Klingon officer honor for honor. Worf had proven to be more than adequate in his role; despite the difficulty of classifying "friend of the bride or friend of the groom" in a service where most of the guests knew both parties equally well, everyone in attendance had been gotten to their places in record time. Possibly they'd suspected that, had they taken too long to consider their answers to that traditional question, they would have been designated places arbitrarily -- and physically.

Looking out at those who'd come to witness and celebrate this marriage, Picard realized with some pain that one of the faces he was looking for was another, like Robert's, that neither he nor his bride could hope to see today. Picard and Beverly had very much wanted Wesley to be here on this day of all days, not only so that they could know that the young man approved of his mother's choice and shared the couple's happiness, but also so that they could start their own new life certain that Wesley (from whom neither of them had heard in far too long) was happy in his. The youth's absence, and their inability to know that he was well or tell him that his mother and his former captain were being married, were among the few disappointments to mar this day.

Picard came abruptly back to the moment as the background music in Ten-Forward changed. Heartbeat suddenly accelerated and breath quickened as he recognized the signal for the processional to begin.

Beverly's favorite nurse entered first, in a shoulder-baring silk sheath the exact shade of the sapphires that studded her side combs and adorned her ears. The brightness of the fabric and the jewels were almost a match for the brightness of Alyssa Ogawa's dark eyes as she walked slowly up the aisle, smiling at the captain as she reached her place opposite him.

Next came Deanna Troi, exotic and stunning in gown and jewels of amethyst, with tendrils of long dark hair escaping its elegant arrangement to trail against bare shoulders. Picard heard two gasps as she approached the rest of the wedding party, knew without looking that neither Riker nor Worf had quite been able to restrain his reaction to the woman's undeniable beauty.

The music changed yet again, and the guests stood. Picard turned to the back of the aisle, his heart seeming for one impossible moment to stop entirely as thought vanished in a swift searing heat of anticipation, sudden doubt, yearning. "Beverly." He was conscious of speaking only after the single whispered word had escaped his parted lips.

He had been right; she was lovelier today than she'd ever been. The emerald gown bared and beautifully offset her creamy shoulders and arms, clinging lovingly to her sleek figure as it descended to a handkerchief-point hem that offered a tantalizing peek at long, slim legs. Flame-red hair escaped its high-piled set to form wispy curls about her radiant face, and the jewels in her ears sparkled like stars. Hand resting lightly on Data's arm, she walked toward her husband-to-be with a deliberate step and a brilliant smile.

She had not come more than a few steps when a sudden movement and a low flare of light pulled her gaze to the side, and drew a delighted cry from her lips. Dropping Data's arm, she lunged into the crowd –

And emerged with her arms wrapped around the tall, slim, and very much present figure of her only son. Gathering her into his own arms, Wesley bowed his head over his mother's for a moment, then looked up to flash his former captain an embarrassed little grin.

Riker chuckled. "Well, if Wesley hasn't learned anything else, he's certainly picked up a sense of drama."

"Indeed he has," Picard murmured back.

There was a little shuffling in the aisle as Data tried to retreat, apparently in deference to the claim of the bride's only male relative, and was caught by Wesley's outthrust hand. After a rapid three-way conference, the bride continued her procession up the aisle, one hand on Wesley's arm, the other on Data's.

In a moment she was there, beside him. The music faded to a soft whisper of background, then faded entirely as Data gently placed Beverly's hand in Picard's, closing his own briefly over both before retiring to his place on the sidelines. A hugely-grinning Wesley reached over to clasp the captain's free hand before he, too, backed away.

Then there was only the look in Beverly's eyes, the warmth of her slim hand in his, the sound of Quinn's voice washing over Picard and the woman he loved in the soothing, traditional platitudes of Starfleet's marriage service. Picard had said those same phrases so many times that he heard them in his own voice as well as that of his old friend, as if he were, himself, also pronouncing the words that would bind him to this woman. Quinn's reading of the ceremony occasionally varied from Picard's, a changed emphasis here, a shifted inflection there, but the differences, far from disturbing the captain, sounded instead to his ears like harmony, the blend of the public ceremony here before the crew with the private ceremony that was playing in the captain's heart.

Beverly had asked for a portion of the service that would be uniquely theirs: a moment in which they would pronounce their own individually selected words of love. Picard had been hesitant at first. He was a private man, unused to speaking of his feelings before anyone other than the one he cared for. Indeed, he had only grown used to that in these last several years, with Beverly (but then, she often seemed to know his feelings before he spoke of them, sometimes before he could define them himself). His hesitancy had reluctantly given way only in the face of three truths he'd had to acknowledge: that he could hardly be self-conscious about proclaiming his emotions in a ceremony that celebrated what he and Beverly shared, that he could not stand with this woman and deny how deeply she touched his soul, and finally, that if this were something she truly wanted, it was not in him to refuse her.

When the moment came for him to speak, he was surprised at how easy it suddenly seemed, how light he felt, as he looked into the blue eyes that had come to color his world, and he spoke of his love.

The words he had selected were as elaborate, as ornate, as any written by his cherished Shakespeare, and yet they were not the Bard's. Beverly and many of those others present would have known how quickly that playwright/poet's words sprang to his lips, how easy it could have been for him to say them without thought. He had chosen to speak, instead, in the words of another ancient poet, Rossetti. The archaic phrases filled the hall as he spoke them, evoking, at least to his mind, images of what this simple service truly signified: the proclamation of a love that was ceremony and exaltation, and unsurpassed beauty.

_My heart is like a singing bird  
__Whose nest is in a watered shoot:  
__My heart is like an apple tree  
__Whose bows are bent with thickset fruit;  
__My heart is like a rainbow shell  
__That paddles in a halcyon sea;  
__My heart is gladder than all these  
__Because my love is come to me._

_Raise me a dais of silk and down;  
__Hang it with vair and purple dyes;_

_Carve it in doves and pomegranates,  
__And peacocks with a hundred eyes;  
__Work it in gold and silver grapes,  
__In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;  
__Because the birthday of my life  
__Is come, my love is come to me._

She was smiling as he finished, those wondrous eyes glittering, and even in the face of all that crowd it was all he could do not to take her in his arms and kiss her then and there. His lips mimed the kiss anyway, and hers gave it back. Then he listened as she gave him in answer words that he knew well, but that he had never heard spoken in such a way, a way that evoked the image of their love flung as a challenge against the vagaries of fate, and future, and the unknown.

_Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
__Admit impediment. Love is not love  
__Which alters when it alteration finds,  
__Or bends with the remover to remove:  
__O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,  
__That looks on tempests, and is never shaken.  
__It is the star to every wandering bark,  
__Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.  
__Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
__Within his bending sickle's compass come;  
__Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks  
__But bears it out, even to the edge of doom.  
__If this be error, and upon me proved,  
__I never writ, nor no man ever loved._

When she had finished, he simply stared at her, in wonder and in awe. Picard had told her what he had seen in the future Q had shown him, these few years ago; she knew the portents against their love, their marriage, nearly as well as Picard knew them himself. She knew that there was at least one future, and possibly there were many, in which Time would indeed drive them apart -- Time, and the infirmity it brought to a man too proud and too self-contained to accept either weakness in himself, or the solicitude it evoked in one who loved him. She knew, and yet she defied them all -- portents, and prophecies, and pain -- with the unanswerable power of her love.

For him. And, while he did not know whether he did, or could, deserve such love, he knew in that moment that he could never deny it, or refuse it, or turn away from it.

She smiled again at him, that little quirking of her lips that he knew so well, and he heard Quinn speaking again. The time had come for their saying of the vows, and the admiral was prompting him to pronounce the words of the simple Starfleet marriage service. He started to comply, then stopped, the half-remembered phrases of a far older ritual forming instead on his lips.

Taking his bride by both hands, his eyes only for her, Jean-Luc Picard said the words in tones intended to be heard in the back of the hall, and perhaps through the ship, or even through space itself: "I, Jean-Luc, take thee, Beverly, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health," and he gave those words a special inflection, remembering where his counterpart had failed in his vows, "to love and to cherish, and, forsaking all others, cleaving only unto thee, until death do us part."

Beverly looked at him, simply looked, the sapphire eyes shining again, the sweet little half-smile almost broken. Her lips parted as if she were asking for something, and he gave her what he had, the ancient, beautiful words, whispering them to her so that she, like he, could proclaim them before the assembly: "I, Beverly, take thee, Jean-Luc, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, and, forsaking all others, cleaving only unto thee, until death do us part."

Picard reached back, and Riker, anticipating his captain as only a devoted officer and friend could, pressed a simple sparkling band into his palm. Taking Beverly's left hand in his own, he slipped the ring down onto her upraised finger, and said, "I give you this ring, as a symbol of my love and loyalty." Then his memory of the old ritual failed him, and he could say no more.

She matched his earlier motion, reaching back toward Deanna for his ring, placing it on his finger with the same words he'd given her. Then they were both silent, their eyes locked in a private moment that was almost a ritual itself.

Quinn stepped into the gap, pronouncing words themselves both welcomed and time-honored: "By the authority vested in me by Starfleet Command and the aligned worlds of the Federation, I now pronounce you husband and wife." There was a smile in his voice as he added, "You may now kiss the bride." And, partly because of the prompting, and partly because it seemed the most natural thing in the universe for him to do at such a time, Picard took his lover -- his _wife_ -- into his arms, and kissed her deeply, drinking in the kiss she gave him in return.

When at last their lips parted, and the strong embrace loosened, Quinn's voice rang through the hall as he proclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure, and my privilege, to present Jean-Luc and Beverly Picard!"

And there was applause, and the glorious sound of the "Ode to Joy" soaring toward crescendo, as the wedding ended and the marriage began.

--END--


End file.
